A metadata consultant has identified three recurring catalog failures that can prevent artists and songwriters from collecting royalties even when their data appears accurate.
The findings come from a review of eleven client engagements over the past year, plus a twelfth focused on operational efficiency. Clients included recording artists, featured performers, songwriters, composers, and small to mid-sized publishing catalogs, with catalog sizes ranging from a handful of works to more than tens of thousands of assets. All findings are reported in generic terms to protect client privacy.
The consultant sorted the root causes into three primary categories.
- Missing: the most common and easiest to fix.
- Mistaken: the hardest to see.
- Conflicting: no party may be wrong, but research is required to resolve.
Missing registrations and claims
More than half of the catalogs reviewed had incomplete registrations and claims, including cases where nothing at all existed with a key entity. The catalogs themselves were generally in good shape from a data perspective: distribution was clean, ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) identifiers were in place, and registrations were complete in some systems. The problem came from key entities being completely overlooked, most often the MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective) or the rights owner side of SoundExchange.
Payment does not happen automatically just because the paperwork looks good. Independent songwriters should check their MLC account or set one up if they have not yet done so. The MLC was completely missing in four of the reviewed catalogs and incomplete in almost all of the others.
Mistaken identity and wrong-party data
Mistaken identity is the most complex category because it behaves differently from other data issues. A missing registration is easy to spot because it is a blank. A registration attached to the wrong party does not announce itself. The record exists, may appear complete and legitimate, passes automated validation checks, and can go unnoticed until human review takes place.
In one case, an artist’s entire catalog appeared to belong to someone else because the two artists shared a name and a database cross-referenced the discographies. In another, a songwriter’s works registered with a PRO (performance rights organization) were crossed with another songwriter of the same name. The consultant noted that a unique IPI (Interested Parties Information) number is important for this reason. A valid identifier had been entered and attached to a plausible name, so nothing in the process caught the error.
Signals that a wrong-party registration may exist include statement details that do not quite match, a credit that looks fine until it leads to the wrong person, or a browser search that returns unexpected results. In the artist case, the error was tracked to one database that had linked two artist discographies into one. The songwriter case remains in progress and is expected to take months before the requested updates are reflected.
Conflicting data and scale
The conflicting category covers situations where no party may be wrong, but research is needed to determine the correct outcome. These categories do not change with scale. A label could have missing revenue channels where rights owner submissions are not kept up, or a publisher could inherit a catalog with partial MLC claims. Economies of scale bring different challenges, as teams may only be able to focus on the highest revenue earners, leaving other issues unresolved.
The consultant noted that the sample selected itself, as clients often seek help when there is a problem or when they need systems in place to scale, not because everything is already perfect.
